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Our first hike was about Forest Foods and Pharmacy.
We learnedabout the
edible, medicinal, and otherwise useful plants of our area with Ila Hatter and
Brittney Hughes. This is the third year we have attended this session and every
year, I learn something new!

After lunch we were supposed to go on the
Chestnut Top Trail but we got there early so we hiked it on our own. It was
really narrow and steep. We decided not to hike with the group since there were
so many people who showed up that it would have been impossible to hear the
leader unless you were the two people behind him. So, we left there and then
hiked up the Ash Hopper Branch trail where we found some beautiful flowers (but
not as much as we saw last year).After
we crossed the water three times, we found one yellow lady slipper on the right
over the creek and then we found a cluster of 3 yellow lady slippers up the
bank on the left.We hiked further up
the trail until it got really steep and turned around.

We were going to change clothes and then head
to dinner but instead, decided to head home. Since 100% rain was expected in
the morning, we decided we wanted to be home before the rain started. I had
totally expected to pay for the room since we were there past check out time,
but they didn’t charge us for that day.

Ila would leave sage or tobacco in the hole where she
collected a plant as a thank you to the earth.

Plantain – used for skin ailments. Make a salve (cold press
or hot). Cold press – crush big pieces of leaves and stick a jar of canola oil.
After a few days, add to beeswax. Hot – fry in olive or canola oil. Good for
bug bites. Crush in hand and put on the bite. Antiviral and heals cuts.

Solomon’s Seal – cut the root and it looks like the red wax
used to seal envelopes; when cut, show the Star of David

Doghobble – used to cover graves

Violets – use leaves and blooms; make syrup or jelly from
blooms; Vitamin C, add leaves with other greens for a salad; too many leaves is
a diuretic; common blue violet mostly used. When making a salve, add to pine
and yellowroot.

Cinquefoil – add to salves; antibiotic properties, not
edible.

You can freeze oil mixtures and heat them up later to add to
beeswax.

Pine needles – young, steep in tea for Vitamin C

Dogwood – inner bark used for quinine

Partridge berry – has progesterone and estrogen in it.

Yucca (Spanish Dagger) used to make cordage

Usnea lichen can burn when wet.

Cherry – has arsenic in it so it has to be used fresh

Wild geraniums used for hemmorhoids (boil and cool off and
then sit in it); used to shrink tissue

Spotted wintergreen – use to help pass kidney stones
(diuretic), used with pipsissewa, sweet birch, sassafras, and roots of joe pye
weed.

Bee balm – has thymol (like Listerine); disinfectant,
expectorant

Wood sorrel (oxalis) – used to stuff fish or in a salad;
lemony tasting.

Sweet birch – pairs of leaves on each branch; low dose of
aspirin in it.

Club moss – doctors used to rub hands in spore powder to
disinfect their hands.

Azalea galls – fleshy; great source of water

We really enjoyed the Pilgrimage this year! It was fun getting together with friends and also making new friends.

Hope you enjoyed my four posts about the Spring Wildflower
Pilgrimage 2015. I am looking forward to going again next year.